Chapter 1

suitcases and a big backpack on my back. I was sweating profusely and dressed rather shabbily. Passengers at the station would often point at me and whisper amongst themselves.This is my first time ta...I served seven years inside, and was granted early release for good behavior.

On my first day out, I received several calls from bosses who tried hard to persuade me to work with them. One offered a monthly salary of 100,000 yuan plus a car allowance, while another offered a monthly salary of 200,000 yuan plus shares.

Most of these calls come from two places.

Beijing's Panjiayuan, Tianjin's Shenyang Dao.

At that time, I considered it but ultimately rejected everything.

I made a wrong decision when I entered this line of work. Even though I became rich overnight, I also paid the price. Seven years have passed, and I've changed from a clean-cut young man to a middle-aged uncle with a beer belly.

The girl I met back then, now even her kids are getting involved in the drama....

I have no relatives or connections, and I ended up choosing Dali as my final destination.

I bought a small shop by the Erhai Lake and opened a small supermarket. When there was no business, I would go for a walk by the sea and feel the sea breeze. Life was pretty leisurely.

The small supermarket is located on Cangshan East Road, next to Lema Supermarket. If you have any friends who want to come and play, I will welcome them with tea.

Wasn't there a discovery of the ancient Shu civilization some time ago, and also unearthed a nationally sensational golden mask Actually, my path to getting rich, has something to do with these things.

I can't live without these two words.

Antiques, tomb robbing.

Several years ago, "Ghost Blowing Lantern," "Tomb Raider Notes," and "Gold Eye" were incredibly popular in film and television. Now that I have some free time, I'm also going to write about these kinds of things.

I haven't seen the Cloud-top Heavenly Palace or the Divine Trees of Qinling Mountains, and I don't have golden eyes. But when I entered the antique business at sixteen, I really did see many things that ordinary people couldn't comprehend.

Let's start from the beginning.

I was born in a small village in Northeast China, right next to the Mo River. In winter, it gets so cold that it can freeze people to death.

My grandmother raised me. I've never met my parents and don't even want to know their names.

As the saying goes, "every other generation is close." When I was young, I was very mischievous and didn't listen to my teachers. My academic performance was terrible, always at the bottom of the class.

At that time, the village provided a social assistance program, which was about eighty yuan per month, and there was also an orphan hardship subsidy of over one hundred yuan per month. Our family said that life was extremely difficult.

Back in middle school, the Central TV channel's treasure-hunting shows were on all day. I was completely hooked. The stuff those people had just lying around, like old bottles and jars, turned out to be worth tens of thousands of yuan according to experts! They could even trade them for houses and cars!

At the time, I kept deceiving my grandmother by saying that school required me to buy learning materials. My grandmother gave me money, and I went to the bookstore and bought all kinds of antique books on calligraphy.

I remember the first book I read was "Fifty Precious Classics from Ancient Wells" published by Mr. Dai. It was a very thick book.

An ancient coin, called a purple coin in our dialect, is what opened my eyes. This book made me fall head over heels for antiques.

I searched through every nook and cranny of our house, and I also tricked my classmates. I didn't even bother reading the characters. I told them that coins were being sold for five cents each and persuaded them to steal copper coins from their homes to sell to me. I bought them all.

I lived frugally. I never ordered extra meals at the dining hall, and later on, I even sold a bunch of textbooks for seven dollars. My grades were terrible, and my teacher would just sigh constantly, saying that this child was finished, that if he didn't study hard, he would only become a social parasite in the future.

At that time, I completely disregarded what the teacher said. I had my mind set on making money. Even if I became a bad influence, I wanted to be a wealthy one.

In my freshman year of high school, the year before the college entrance examination, I was 16.

Grandma had an accident while sweeping snow in the courtyard and broke her leg. The medical expenses and surgery fees add up to over three thousand dollars.

Our family situation at the time was dire, we couldn't even come up with 600 yuan. I remember vividly how my grandmother lay on the kang bed, covered in thick blankets, and would cry at night.

My uncle-in-law opened several farm stays in Mohe, a snowy region. He does pretty well for himself, so I went to his place and borrowed some money from him to buy medicine for my grandmother.

Although he didn't say anything on the surface, I secretly overheard my uncle once saying that I was a jinx and that our family was poor. He said that the money we lent out was gone for good and told my aunt to keep her distance from us.

That winter night in Mohe, the temperature dropped to over thirty degrees below zero. I sat on a stone for more than three hours.

In his youth, his uncle's words shattered the boy's pride.

Clutching the borrowed money, I swore to myself: "I, Xiang Yunfeng! I will definitely make a name for myself!"

I dropped out of school myself. To be strict, I don't even have a junior high school diploma, so I'm like a primary school graduate.

Three thousand yuan. Besides the money used for Grandma's surgery and medicine, there are seven hundred and fifty-three yuan left. I secretly kept this money.

"Not only did I collect copper coins, but I also went to neighboring villages to collect porcelain and silver ingots."

Villagers only think silver coins are valuable; they don't understand or care much about things like bottles, dishes, and porcelain.

>By watching the antique appraisal programs every day, I have gradually developed some basic eye for antiques.

I bought a pair of late Qing Dynasty yanglan chicken feather duster bottles for one hundred yuan, several Republic of China powder-colored ladies' figure small salt jars for less than two hundred yuan, and three Qing mid-period folk kiln blue and white bowls for one hundred and eighty yuan. Unfortunately, these three bowls all have claw patterns, were not well preserved, and all have large lines.

I still had a small bag of copper coins, about two hundred or so. Most of the coins were Song and Qing Dynasty coins. Among them, Daoguang, Guangxu, Qianlong, Huangsong, and Yuanfeng were the most common. I knew these copper coins were widely circulated and not very valuable. The one that pleased me the most was having three well-preserved Yongzheng coins. I knew Yongzheng Tongbao could be worth some money, but at the time I didn't know exactly how much.

After buying all these things, it cost me over five hundred. I still had 240 yuan left. At that time, the average monthly salary was just over three hundred.

I was close friends with a female classmate at the time, and she helped me out by lending me two 30-inch rolling suitcases.

There were eleven porcelain pieces and a small bag of copper coins. I carefully wrapped them in blankets, layer after layer, afraid they would break, and stuffed plenty of foam around them as well.

Finally, they were packed full into two large suitcases and a backpack.

My grandma doesn't understand what I'm doing. She says I'm not working a proper job and that she raised me for nothing. My uncle also found out about this, and most people in the village know about it too.

Many people talk about me behind my back.

Bearing the stares and the weight of others' misunderstanding, on the 17th day of the twelfth lunar month, I packed my belongings and left Mohe.

At the time, I thought that people from Beijing were the wealthiest. Naturally, I should sell my antiques to them. Besides, I had long yearned to visit the legendary Panjiayuan Market.

There are no direct trains from Mohe to Beijing. You have to first take a train to Siping, and then from Siping to Beijing West.

The entire journey is over two thousand kilometers and takes more than fifty hours. To save money, I chose the cheapest hard seat.

I was carrying two large suitcases and a big backpack on my back. I was sweating profusely and dressed rather shabbily. Passengers at the station would often point at me and whisper amongst themselves.

This is my first time taking a train, and I've never been out of town before. I'm traveling alone.

After buying the train ticket, I only have less than a hundred yuan left. If I can't sell my things, I won't even be able to afford the return ticket, let alone food.

The food on the train was expensive, and I couldn't afford it. I just used my thermos to heat up water directly. When I was really hungry, I bought a bag of four yuan's dough twists.

A kid from the countryside visited Beijing for the first time. Everything was new and exciting to him. He had never seen security scanners at train stations before.

I wasn't very old at the time, but I wasn't afraid of strangers and was willing to talk to people. I asked someone how to get to Panjiayuan Antique Market. The ticket seller was very kind and told me to take the subway and even gave me instructions on how to transfer lines.

Take the Line 9 from Beijing West Station, then transfer to Line 10 at Liujiaqiao Station and get off at Panjiayuan Station.

Anyway, I have a good memory and didn't take many wrong turns. Back then, the subway was only two yuan per ride, and as long as you didn't get off, nobody cared.

After getting off the subway, the sidewalk was full of uneven paving stones. With my backpack and two large suitcases, I found it very difficult to walk.

After crossing the Huaiwei Bridge, I finally saw the golden stele standing outside the North Gate.

Panjiayuan Antique Market.

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Finally here...l, we built a fire. No one was on watch duty. The three of us lay on the ground around the fire, our eyes closed.However, this time is different from last night. We didn't sleep at all.They are all pr...